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The Jobs Report on Friday May Be a Fluke and a Political Football

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This close to an election, even the driest economic data can be politicized. So if the monthly jobs report lands on Friday with an unusually low number of jobs created in October, Republican campaigns may blast it out as a sign that the labor market has taken a turn for the worse. (Last month, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida reacted to a strong report by calling it “fake.”)That wouldn’t necessarily be true.The last couple of months have seen an unusual amount of disruption. First came the Boeing strike in September, taking some 35,000 workers off payrolls, plus another 6,000 from smaller strikes. Then came Hurricanes Helene and Milton, which spiked unemployment claims by about 35,000 in early October.All in all, economists are forecasting a gain of 110,000 jobs in October. That would be a significant step down from the 186,000 jobs added on average over each of the previous three months, pending any revisions. But it also wouldn’t be an accurate representation of employers’ appetite to hire.In general, a broad spectrum of data suggests that the labor market has settled into a moderate pace of job growth, enough to soak up the 150,000 or so people who enter the work force each month. The unemployment rate has fallen back to 4.1 percent, and overall economic growth came in strong last quarter, showing that the foundations of the economy are sound. More

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    Fact-Checking Biden’s and Trump’s Claims About the Economy

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    We fact-checked claims about inflation, jobs and tax policy from both presidential candidates.Consumer sentiment about the state of the economy could be pivotal in shaping the 2024 presidential election.President Biden is still grappling with how to address one of his biggest weaknesses: inflation, which has recently cooled but soared in his first years in office. Former President Donald J. Trump’s frequent economic boasts are undermined by the mass job losses and supply chain disruptions wrought by the pandemic.Here’s a fact check of some of their more recent claims about the economy.Both candidates misrepresented inflation.A grocery store in Queens, New York, earlier this year.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesWhat Was Said“They had inflation of — the real number, if you really get into the real number, it’s probably 40 percent or 50 percent when you add things up, when you don’t just put in the numbers that they want to hear.”— Mr. Trump at a campaign event in Detroit in June“I think it could be as high as 50 percent if you add everything in, when you start adding energy prices in, when you start adding interest rates.”— Mr. Trump in a June interview on Fox NewsThis is misleading. Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, cited a 41 percent increase in energy prices since January 2021, and prices for specific energy costs like gasoline rising more than 50 percent during that time.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More